a busy friday

August 07, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Busy day yesterday... I worked from home, which allowed me and Miggles to meet Kathy, her sister, Magilla, and D4 at McCormick's and Schmidt's for lunch. They were celebrating 12 years downtown by selling lobsters for $12. I'm not normally a lobster person (too much work... give me a steak any day), but $12 is a steal so that's what I got. The place was packed, as you would expect. The wait wasn't bad at all to get seated, but our waiter really wasn't on top of his game. He was slow, dropped a couple things, and brought me a pepsi after I asked for a coke (if you say, "Is a pepsi ok?", I'll say no and get something else, but I'll like you a whole lot more than if I ask for coke and you bring me a pepsi bottle). But whatever, $12 lobster.

After lunch I worked for a bit longer. The plan was to go up to Griffith Park around sunset to show Kathy's sister the view from up there. They were going to pick me up downtown and then we would head over from there. But an hour and a half or so before they were to pick me up I got it in my head that I wanted to head over to the ALDO on Melrose (right near Fairfax) and pick up a pair of shoes I was eying last time I was there. So I decided to make things fun, and to get this done without driving. It's only about 9 miles, but I would have had to deal with the 101, parking, etc, so driving over there really wasn't going to be worth it.

So I took the subway. Now, an astute reader at this point will say, "Hey, there's no subway station near there." And they'll be mostly right. The nearest station is Hollywood / Highland, about a 2 mile trip (mostly) north. But what's 2 miles among friends? I grabbed my skateboard (purely for transportation... i suck at skateboards) and headed over to the Pershing Square Red Line stop. The train came quick enough, I took a seat (it was a pretty full train, but not standing-room only), and we were off.

I got off at Hollywood/Highland, went west on Hollywood to La Brea, and then went south from there, enjoying the gentle downhill. A right on Melrose, a bit farther avoiding the pedestrians and outdoor tables jutting into the sidewalk, and I was there. I think in the end it took me a little under an hour door to door. It would have been quicker if I had biked, but the plan was to still get picked up and that would have been unwieldy.

After buying the shoes I was still running ahead of the others, so I took back off east on Melrose, figuring I'd just get as far as I could to shave distance off them picking me up. I actually ended up making it all the way to Western, which is the street we were taking up into the park, and Kathy picked me up at Western/Melrose.

Total distance covered on the skateboard was about 5 miles, I think. It was a beautiful day out and good exercise, so I was all for it.

All together now we went up to Griffith Park, got cool pictures of the sun setting next to the Hollywood sign, and then exited out the east side of the park headed for Pasadena to see a movie.

We saw Garden State at the Laemmle Playhouse. It was a great movie that really needs to play wider.

Finally we tried to get some pancakes downtown. We ended up successful, but not to the extent we had desired. The new downtown IHOP closes at 10pm, the Pantry was too busy to start serving pancakes (even though they usually do so around midnight and it was 12:45am), so the only remaining option was Dennys. Not normally my first choice, but the food was good and they were amazingly quick, so I can't complain.

Tonight we're off to the Dodger game, which will be my first this season. I'm a slacker.

LA Blogs' Friday Questions

August 06, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Jonah is asking people a set of questions about LA this morning over at LA Blogs. I think they're interesting questions and he's been doing really cool stuff over there of late, so I figure I'll take a minute to put some answers here.

• How long have you lived in Los Angeles?

I arrived in LA on August 21, 2001.

• Were you born here?

No, I was born in Columbia, SC; home of the other USC.

• How long did you plan on staying here originally?

I came out here for college, so I guess originally would be four years. Or, at my pace, four and a half or so (though I didn't know that then).

• How long do you plan on staying here now?

No clue. Probably not forever.

• What keeps you here?

Well, school for one. But also just the idea that I live in a place that's alive with options. There's always something going on that sounds interesting. The music scene is amazing. Being able to go see any indie film I want is amazing. Being so close to the ocean, the mountains, huge parks, the desert, Vegas...

• What makes you want to leave?

I don't really see LA as a place I'd want to raise a family. It can be done, and I know plenty of native LA people who came out just fine, but I don't really know that it's the life for me. The south beckons me to return...

• What is your biggest suprise about living here?

I guess just the random people I've met outside of school. And I guess the the sense in which there really isn't a single "LA". There's downtown, the westside, the eastside... It's all "LA", but there's no way to umbrella it all together.

• What is your biggest disappointment about living here?

Not living at the beach. I want a beach house.

Music: Yardley @ Hard Rock Cafe, Citywalk

August 06, 2004 by Eric Richardson

When my mom was here I made a one line mention of going over to the Hard Rock Cafe in the Beverly Center to see Yardley, the ever-evolving band put together by Lee Beth Kilgore. Last night Hard Rock was again the scene, but this time it was the other LA Hard Rock, the one in City Walk. Kathy and her sister had been up in SF for a few days, but they made it back into LA just in time to meet me there for the show.

I've expressed before how much I hate Citywalk. The expensive parking... The crowds... The knockoff versions of authentic LA establishments... But whatever, sometimes you do things you don't want to and what I did want to do was go see music. I took the Red Line, too, which meant I got to avoid the outrageous parking charge.

Yardley was debuting a new drummer for this show. He auditioned Saturday, learned his stuff, and played the show yesterday (Wednesday). He did his job well, and everything sounded great. The Hard Rock's really not a venue designed for music, but they did have nice equipment, and that helps immensely. Lee Beth is really hoping that this will be the line-up they can finally say "this is Yardley," and if it is I think it's a good one.

I was noticing yesterday that Lee Beth is very straight to business running a show. Very little talking, just straight to the music and little breaking between songs. She can fit a lot of songs into a little set that way, so I guess that's good.

All in all, a fun show.

following up on the busway

August 05, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Just following up on yesterday's post about stopped work on the Orange Line. The Daily News is the source of good morning reading today, with an article on one man leading the busway opposition and an editorial decrying NIMBY opposition to the construction. Both make the point that NIMBY concerns already scuttled both subway and light-rail plans in the valley, forcing Metro to go with the busway.

But Tom Rubin, the subject of the aforementioned article, doesn't just think the valley busway is a bad idea.

He said he sees faults in the MTA's other projects, the trains to the Eastside and Santa Monica, but has to pick his battles -- though he's already criticized the Santa Monica train proposal, saying it, too, should have considered the Rapid bus alternative.

Now wait just a minute... There's already Rapid bus service to Santa Monica. The 720 bus heads from downtown to the ocean along Wilshire, a street with some of the worst traffic in the country. And what happens to a bus in that traffic? Oh, right, it doesn't go very fast. And what happens when Metro tries the only thing remaining in its power and wants to make one lane on Wilshire buses only? Oh, right, people complain. Shop owners complain they'll lose valuable curbside parking that -- wait a minute -- isn't even legal in the times Metro wants the bus-only lane.

Local blogger and Trojan fan BoiFromTroy wraps up a post quoting from the Daily News editorial with this:

With a partial assist from the Daily News, Mayor James Hahn has turned Los Angeles into a BANANA Republic, where we build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody. Expand the airport? Bah...bog it down in a convoluted "security" plan. Build solid waste storage? Why bother when we can ship it 70 miles to someone else's landfill. Fix the freeways? How come if all people will do is drive on them!?!

a little xs fun

August 04, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I spent most of my night tonight trying to figure out how to write Perl XS bindings for Edb. Partially, it was because I felt (and feel) that my knowledge of the XS black arts was (and is) lacking. Partially, though, it's because both Edb and EET are really cool libs that I could see using.

The result? I got it to where I could open the db file, set a string, get the string, and close the file. That's enough for tonight.